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xii Introduction
for our Uncle Sam and a truly far-reaching salesman of our American way of life.
I see D. W. now, standing beside the camera, a lean, hawklike individual with an old straw hat, the top unraveled (he believed the sun would stop him from losing his hair). He wore a large, black, Chinese prayer ring, which he constantly twirled while directing us, and at the same time he jingled silver coins in his trouser pocket. Eccentric? Yes. But certainly no poseur. D. W.'s presence was magnetic. Nothing before or since has given me the warm satisfaction of a performance that pleased Mr. Griffith.
You may ask, "Did you have fun?" Of course we did. But we were all young and full of the zest of life and creation. We had our tragedies, especially when our performances did not measure up to what was expected of us. Then, too, there was keen rivalry and jealousy over the plum roles we felt would advance us artistically.
Mr. Griffith kept us on the qui vive by pitting our talents and temperament one against the other. As I look back along the many years, I realize that David Wark Griffith was a great virtuoso who played on the heartstrings of his actors. No one during my entire career ever reached me, mentally or emotionally, as he did. Sometimes he would say while directing me, "Pickford, you read my thoughts," and I believe I actually did.
It was a great sadness to me and all those who knew and loved him and respected his tremendous contribution to the motion-picture industry, that Mr. Griffith, during the latter part of his life, was so neglected and so tragically ignored by the industry that he greatly helped to create. But I recall that he was an extremely sensitive and proud Kentuckian who would not for an instant tolerate anything that he thought